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[CONTEST] Blender Sourcerers Competition

Blender Sourcerers Competition (competition is closed)
The Freedom Fighter Corps organizes the Blender Sourcerers Contest. With prices to win and honor and respect to gain.
So show your skills and participate to win this contest!

What is the Blender Sourcerers Contest? (competition is closed)
Compete with your skills by making a video about your recipes to help get others starting into the magical wonderland of the Blender Source Development. And help others to start cooking up their own recipes. Or let more experienced magicians see how it is done the proper way!

How to compete and win? (competition is closed)
Submit a Blender Development video and win! (you can no longer enter the competition)

Duration of the contest (competition is closed)
The end of the competition is: End of April 2012
To compete for the prices your post including the video('s) needs to be posted before the 1st of May 2012.
No alterations after April 2012 allowed. (Modified posts with a modify date after 1st of May 2012 will be excluded from the competition - modification is only allowed by moderators).

Why is the Blender Sourcerers Contest? (competition is closed)
The Blender Sourcerers Contest helps to stimulate the development of the Blender source, by spreading knowledge. The resulting video' s will help to address difficulties for the Blender Sourcerers apprentices, (also known as noobs, newbies or rookies). But also will this take off the load of the existing Blender Sourcerers, those who' s magic time is too precious to steal. At the same time, developers can learn from each other and gain from new fresh blood which might be that missing ingredient for their potion. Learn, help to learn and learn some more is the thought behind this competition. With the overall winner, the Blender community.

For who is the Blender Sourcerers Contest? (competition is closed)
The Blender Sourcerers Contest is a contest for experienced developers of the Blender Source, the Sourcerers in this competition. But also for those apprentices just diving into the Blender potion making, trying to cook up their first recipes. By sharing the experiences so far, others can more easily catch up to speed. And start stirring around in your kettle, take a little sip to find out what is missing. So open up your kitchens and let's see what' s brewing.

How to participate? (competition is closed)
You can compete by posting your video in the [VIDEOS] Blender Sourcerers Videos thread. No explanation, no discussion, just implement your video. And stick to the rules described below. Only submit your own video's.
Make sure to PM your Paypal address in time to collect your price!That is easy right?

How to submit a video? (competition is closed)
1] Upload a video on Youtube, under a CC and/or GPL license, so that others are free to download, modify and share the video free of charge.
2] Submit the video by including it in a post you reply on the:[VIDEOS] Blender Sourcerers Videos thread.(Do not discuss or comment in the [VIDEOS] Blender Sourcerers Videos thread!)
With every video you post, provide a proper title describing the content of the video and provide the appropriate skill level (combinations of skill level are allowed!).
See below for which skill levels are allowed.

The skill levels[Very Easy] - Start up video containing the required steps to get started, including finding and setting up the software.[Easy] - Covers everything you need to know, explain every step of the way.[Intermediate] - Covers most steps, but assumes you already do know a thing or two.[Advanced] - Assumes you are advanced enough to follow along without in depth explanation.[**Special**] - Specialized subjects, in depth topics or anything that doesn't quite fit any other skill level above, either by content or because of the hardcore skill-set required to follow along.

Want to reply, post a comment or discuss anything?
Do not post anything other then the video's in the Blender Sourcerers thread. This keeps it clean and this will help to make this thread perform optimal!

Who wins?
The resulting video's will be put in a youtube video channel (So make sure we can have access to download those videos).
The winner is determined by the amount of views (per video) on Youtube (50%);
Each individual* competitor will get 2 votes, which can be used to vote on one or two video's (but not your own) (50%).
*--You can post as many video' s as you want, to increase chance to win, but each individual gets only 2 votes.--
The end result is determined 50% by Youtube views and 50% by the competitors.
When undecided, the order of submission will be taken into account.

In the media:BlenderNationHave seen (or posted) an other article online, make sure to post it in this thread!

*Afterwards, when the contest is over, the competition texts might be altered so that the remaining [VIDEOS] Blender Sourcerers Videos thread is a great resource to dive into the source of Blender and start on modifying the Blender source.*Rules are subject to change without prior notice
**The competition is over, you can no longer participate for the prices. However it is still possible to share video's to help others out and show your tips and tricks to the community. Thanks for sharing!

Hey there, may have a go at this - sometimes I wonder if others would like to see how experienced devs tackle problems. I know I always liked to look over devs shoulders and see how they work - and still do, theres lots of areas to learn and when your starting out its hard to know which are worthwhile (should I learn regex? what watchpoints are? - should I care about dtrace, valgrind, gdb, profiling etc?).
downside is some of these tricks are a bit IDE/OS spesific - though most of it is transferable - just learning that these tools exist is nifty I find.

...sometimes I wonder if others would like to see how experienced devs tackle problems. I know I always liked to look over devs shoulders and see how they work...

Originally Posted by ideasman42

...theres lots of areas to learn and when your starting out its hard to know which are worthwhile...

Well that is exactly what the idea behind this contest!

As you raise it is indeed very interesting to see (and learn) from how others perceive and tackle problems.
This might be interesting for everyone from starters to the best of the most experienced dev's.

Wow, this is exactly what I'd be interested in seeing! I want to join the party with a simple and very small change to the code. While I have some dusty C skills, I'd like to see how an experienced coder would approach a simple change, from first idea, to locating the relevant source file, to adding and testing the change, to submitting it for consideration for inclusion in the trunk.

For linux users - I had some trouble converting an OGV to AVI and uploading to youtube (looks to be a problem in mencoder, tried many commands on online help but all failed), anyway...
heres what I found to be good encoding settings.

We have our very first contestant, this video already has 151 views on Youtube and taking the leading position in this competition!
@ideasman42: very cool!

Originally Posted by zavigny

Wow, this is exactly what I'd be interested in seeing! I want to join the party with a simple and very small change to the code. While I have some dusty C skills, I'd like to see how an experienced coder would approach a simple change, from first idea, to locating the relevant source file, to adding and testing the change, to submitting it for consideration for inclusion in the trunk.

@Ideasman42: That was terrific! Sheesh... I really learned from that... I learned that I have a lot more to learn!

Thanks for your time and effort, and pat yourself on your back, 'cause it really was awesome to me. I was fascinated watching your code discovery thinking process, and being able to follow along so easily while you checked out the code relations and if/how it conformed to previous similar work, making the change and evaluating the results...the whole she-bang. The IDE was unfamiliar to me (I'm Xcode), and quite an eye-opener in operation. The video was so jam-packed with really good stuff, and I was concentrating so hard, that I laughed out loud in comic relief when your dog showed up. Nice touch!

Now I need to slow it all down by digesting it in smaller chunks, and looking closer at it all with a more relaxed eye. Freakin' great job!

@Crumpet : Well, "dusty" may not be strictly accurate in todays coding environment. More like buried under a mudflow. But hey, I can lose track of my stack pointer with the best of them, so maybe someday...

It really does help to know that that I'm not doing anything unusual or bass ackwards. Since I learned C using Kernighan & Ritchies' "The C Programming Language" as my only study, my workflow is only so polished (or not.. ). I mean, how would I really know unless I see what others, especially those who are quite accomplished, are doing?

Great insight: I installed QT Creator, 'cause it looked a lot cleaner and easier on my eyes and brain then Xcode. Love it so far!

eek, your right, its fixed in trunk now, also committed same fix for UVs - this remember last used settings feature would have been good to have had early on, finding every instance where its needed now is a real nuisance.

Perhaps it is interesting to work the way up from the lowest possible "blender source development for the computer impared" to slowly let everyone grow and experiment simultaneous while the video thread grows?
(referencing to where to get your information will be sufficient in most situations, to set individuals on the right track facing the right direction. There is enough tutorials out there to learn programming, but what do you recommend to start with and how to work your way up? )

[Very Easy] -> [Easy] -> [Intermediate] -> [Advanced]

Just some brainfarts:
- [Blender Source] How to set up your system SVN (as in, where to get SVN, set it up for blender)
- [Blender Source] How to set up your system QTcreator (as in, where to get QTcreator, set it up for blender (+SVN)..)
- [Blender Source] The 10 best practices (do's and do-not's)
- [Blender Source] How to go from novice to pro (Guideline video presenting the required steps and recommended path to walk)
- ... the sky is the limit

As an absolute Newbie to the programming side of Blender, this is so useful.
Documentation is great, but video tutes can be very effective and inspirational to hear someone talking through it.

It would be nice to see a dedicated page/site for developer tutes ideas and sharing etc. similar to all the other sites out there wich focus on using blender.

Awesome!!!!

J

This is the idea:
this video thread as result of the competition is aiming to have a good high quality resource, so others can dive in and grow along.
And yes, these videos could be integrated in some sort of dedicated website, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. First things first: producing and gathering videos.

But do not forget, we all need to contribute to realize this and we shouldn't depend on the videos submitted so far.

You too (speaking to everyone reading this) can help out.
Beginner videos can be made by beginners, who are in the process of tackling the problems a beginner experiences.

By posting videos (even though they aren't perfect), others can learn and fill in the gaps.
So just showing what you have learned from the existing videos will already be of great assistance to others, who see you doing a step they never thought about.

The following isn't a video or something I wrote, but I stumbled onto a comprehensive guide on error types and other bugs that people new to Blender development might run into with their own work with advice on how to fix it.

Someone could possibly make a video that covers something similar though, but I'd thought I'd just put this out here.

Sweet Dragon dreams, lovely Dragon kisses, gorgeous Dragon hugs. How sweet would life be to romp with Dragons, teasing you with their fire and you being in their games, perhaps they can even turn you into one as well.
Adventures in Cycles; My official sketchbook